No time for dilly dallying with jobs this morning, our hire car was being delivered to the bar at 10am and we wanted to shoot straight off. The inevitable paperwork and car checks finally came to an end and we decided to head to Funchal to buy maps and visit the tourist office first. After escaping the building works in the marina we were amazed by the beautiful new roads which due to the extremely hilly terrain are either a bridge or a tunnel. I hadn’t realised Madeira would be quite so mountainous. Every couple of minutes we would duck into another identical looking tunnel. It appears they have a fab new tunnelling machine and can’t wait to drill roads through mountains. The houses and streets too were all very well maintained. These people obviously take pride in their beautiful country.

  The bookshop we were heading for in Funchal took us to the waterfront where the cruise ships Queen Victoria, Oriana and another unknown one were docked. Queen Victoria dwarfed Oriana which I always remembered as extremely large when sailing past it in the Solent. The marina in the harbour was very busy and noisy making me glad to be moored at Quinta de Lorde. We took our purchases to study in a coffee shop: Si was dying to try real Madeira cake which wasn’t at all what I was expecting. The same type of sponge baked round was split and it was sandwiched and covered with a rather delightful caramel goo and topped with walnuts. Well I wasn’t going to turn down a couple of mouthfuls was I?

   Funchal was lovely with pretty mosaic pavements and troughs of flowers below attractive buildings. It was just a shame we had arrived at the same time as the passengers from the three cruise liners as the whole town was swarming with tourists looking like kids on a school trip wearing stick-on badges indicating their ship and bus number. We’d planned the Madeira wine tour at Blandy’s but one look inside was enough; we escaped the crowds promptly.

   Although also crowded the covered market was very interesting, the fruit stalls piled high with unfamiliar produce and dried chillies hanging above in a zillion shades of red; such a picture. We followed our noses to the basement which houses the fish market. Massive preparation tables sat behind huge troughs of ice with a multitude of squiggly things waiting for a pan. Through the back doors we searched in vain for a restaurant recommended by Phil and Linda, but through a fruit shop ate great homemade vegetable soup and fruit salad in a little café. It had to be a good sign if the local policeman was having lunch there.

  Only a couple of minutes walk and we were at the base of cable car which took us to Monte high above Funchal and the tropical gardens. We wandered through the dense planting much of it originating in Australia. Our entry ticket included a free sample of Madeira wine so we took one sweet and one dry to compare. Best to buy later in the supermarket we thought. I then had a bit of a work out running around trying to find Simon after managing to lose him while stopping to photograph Koi Carp in the Japanese Gardens. I’m sure he hides from me! We caught up high at the top and took that exit in search of a bus back to the city. It was then we were passed at great speed by a Monte sledge, basically a small wicker sofa with wooden battens attached to the base. At the top of the hill a lorry was unloading a stack of sledges, the young carreiros or sledge drivers dressed in white with straw boaters. It had to be done! I nervously tucked the camera under the seat and braced myself, Si sat back waiting for the adrenaline rush. Well I needn’t have feared for our two carreiros steered us away from brick walls, houses and the occasional parked car and soon we were not at the bottom as we thought, but a couple of kilometres further down. Taxi drivers pounced on us touting for business but we decided to walk the remainder. The long steep walk was a big strain on old knees but what lovely houses and gardens we walked past with bougainvilleas and vines trailing over the walls.

   Now late afternoon, our day was vanishing fast so we decided to drive past Cabo Girão (the highest sea cliff in the world) then head north and see the top of the island while it was still light. The roads became narrower and the mountains grew larger with terraced crops stretching high into the hills and the tops rising into cloud. In contrast to the wide modern roads of the south we’d taken the old road with mountain passes reminiscent of holidays in Switzerland. I peered over the sheer drops into wooded valleys way below us. The scenery was nothing less than stunning. At São Vincente we hit he sea (almost literally) and turned right over a bridge at the waters edge. It was then a very scenic drive back down the east coast where we caught the last of the daylight checking out the São Lourenco peninsula just beyond the marina.